Steve Ballmer

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Bio

Steve Ballmer left Microsoft in 2014, but with 4 percent of the company to his name, he’s still its largest individual shareholder. “I’d like to own Microsoft shares until I either give something to charity or I die,” Ballmer told Forbes in 2014. When his former college roommate Bill Gates recruited him to work for Microsoft, Ballmer dropped out of Stanford’s business school to join the company in 1980 as employee No. 30. Ballmer rose through the ranks, eventually replacing Gates as the company’s chief executive in 2000. During his tenure, Microsoft acquired video and voice-messaging service Skype, and helped create its Xbox division and its $20 billion enterprise business, which includes products like Exchange and Windows Server. The bombastic chief executive transitioned Microsoft from a company that had placed inordinate emphasis on the personal computer to one with a diversified product lineup.

Still, he drew criticism as Microsoft lagged behind with consumer technology. Microsoft was late to create and produce its own music player, tablet, and smartphone. “In many cases, Microsoft latched onto technologies like smartphones, touchscreens, ‘smart’ cars, and wristwatches that read sports scores aloud long before Apple or Google did. But it repeatedly killed promising projects if they threatened its cash cows,” The Wall Street Journal noted in 2013. Ballmer’s relationship with Gates eventually soured, and, reportedly, the two no longer speak. When Ballmer stepped down, Satya Nadella succeeded him in 2014.

These days, however, much of Ballmer’s time and energy is directed toward the Los Angeles Clippers, the basketball team he bought for an unprecedented $2 billion in August 2014. He and his wife, Connie, have also made sizable donations to schools, including the University of Oregon and Harvard University’s computer-science department.